An automatic analyzer is known as an apparatus that automatically conducts a qualitative/quantitative analysis of a biological sample (hereinafter, called a specimen) such as blood and urine and in large hospitals and clinical examination centers where many patients' specimens need to be processed in a short time, various kinds of automatic analyzers, from small to large apparatuses, are used in accordance with necessary processing capabilities.
In such an automatic analyzer, various kinds of processes is performed by using specimen containers containing specimens and particularly in a large automatic analyzer, it is necessary to handle a huge amount of specimen containers and various technologies have been developed to make the analysis more efficient.
For example, PTL 1 (JP 2004-61136 A) discloses a technology to grip a plurality of containers containing specimens simultaneously to shift the containers from rack to rack.